"Anon, Father, anon; I am sick and weary. But, nay--nay, I am better
now,--better. Smile again, Father. I am hungered, too; yes, indeed
and in sooth, yes. Ah, sweet Saint Mary, give me life and strength,
and hope and patience, for his dear sake!"

The stirring events which had within the last few weeks diversified
the quiet life of the scholar had somewhat roused him from his wonted
abstraction, and made the actual world a more sensible and living
thing than it had hitherto seemed to his mind; but now, his repast
ended, the quiet of the place (for the inn was silent and almost
deserted) with the fumes of the wine--a luxury he rarely tasted--
operated soothingly upon his thought and fancy, and plunged him into
those reveries, so dear alike to poet and mathematician. To the
thinker the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which,
like Homer's chain, extend, link after link; from earth to heaven.
The sunny motes, that in a glancing column came through the lattice,
called Warner from the real day,--the day of strife and blood, with
thousands hard by driving each other to the Hades,--and led his
scheming fancy into the ideal and abstract day,--the theory of light
itself; and the theory suggested mechanism, and mechanism called up
the memory of his oracle, old Roger Bacon; and that memory revived the
great friar's hints in the Opus magnus,--hints which outlined the
grand invention of the telescope; and so, as over some dismal
precipice a bird swings itself to and fro upon the airy bough, the
schoolman's mind played with its quivering fancy, and folded its calm
wings above the verge of terror.

Occupied with her own dreams, Sibyll respected those of her father;
and so in silence, not altogether mournful, the morning and the noon